Scams surface after tsunami

News-Times, The (Danbury, CT)

Published
7:00 pm EST, Monday, January 3, 2005

The idea was to sell it on eBay for $99.

Images from south Asia flooded her television screen. Guilt set in.

"The moment I put it up there I really started regretting it," said
Tirado
, a freelance writer in Southbury who graduated from
Danbury High School
in 1985. "The news started coming in as to how bad it really was. In a few days we knew it was catastrophic. I was going to take it down," she said.

Then a 20-year-old guy from Canada e-mailed her. He told her he was putting together a Web site that would help the millions of people displaced by the Christmas tidal wave. The Internet address would make the work that much easier.

"I told him as long as it was going to be used for sincere work I would be more than happy to donate it to him," Tirado said.

A few days later, she saw the domain name offered on eBay for $50,000.

In the wake of disasters like the one in Asia, scammers come crawling.

"People will come out of the woodwork trying to take advantage of people's good intentions. The Internet makes it easy. People send out spams with links to fake sites that look like the real organization," Borochoff said. "It can also be very simple. Somebody will just go out and collect cash. Or they'll sell something on eBay with a claim saying there is a percentage going to charity."

On Tuesday,
The Washington Times
reported that representatives of the
Oxfam
charity dumped e-mails on people asking them to donate to the charity by sending money to a bank account in Spain.

The problem was they were scammers not connected to Oxfam.

There are several ways the average Joe can make sure the money he donates will help people - not line the pockets of some phantom fraudulent charity.

The group assigns letter grades to charities based on a formula, including how much of the money raised by the organization goes to charitable programs. The grades range from A (excellent) to F (poor).

Another Web site - Guidestar.org - maintains a national database of nonprofit organizations. The site has an easy-to-use feature where people can look up financial information - including
Internal Revenue Service
filings - on thousands of nonprofits.

Looking up the information is free, but the site requires a user name and password. The site also charges a fee for more detailed financial information.

People with questions on charities can get answers by calling state Attorney General
Richard Blumenthal
's office. The attorney general advises people to stick to charities with a track record.

"Citizens should be generous, but give to organizations they know and trust. My office will continue to closely scrutinize charities that seem suspect and will take swift legal action against con artists," Blumenthal said.

Beware of Web sites with spelling errors, Borochoff said. The errors could be a tip-off that the site is a scam being run outside the country.

"You'll probably have a lot of foreign scammers, outside the scope of American regulators and prosecutors. Domestically, you'd be really foolish to do it, because the regulators are going to jump all over this," he said.

Other red flags include e-mails asking for money, telemarketers and anyone acting as a "middle man" between your money and the charity. People selling items on Internet auction sites promising to donate the money should also raise suspicions.

"We don't do telephone solicitations, at least in our local chapter," said
Michael Malone
, of the American Red Cross of Western Connecticut. "There were people in the winter of 2000 who were hitting up nursing homes, saying they were from the Red Cross. If you ever get a call like that, ask them to send literature to their home. As a chapter, we do not do that."

Volunteers collecting donations for the American Red Cross of Western Connecticut get a validation letter, along with a name tag and literature from the local chapter, Malone said. If volunteers go door-to-door asking for money, they are advised to stay in their own neighborhood and to alert the police of their activities.

The Internet auction for "tsunamirelief.com" was yanked off eBay hours after press reports surfaced.

The Web site itself was up and running Thursday - with no information posted about who runs the site. Those wanting to make donations were linked to Web sites belonging to the American Red Cross and the Canadian Red Cross.

Tirado, meanwhile, said she spoke Monday to the Canadian man who now owns "tsunamirelief.com."

"I told him I wanted to know that no one was making a penny off that domain name," Tirado said. "He is claiming that he is sincere. How do I know that is true?"